The delivery of safe produce is performed by many farms in the United States and elsewhere. There have been incidences in which a small amount of produce was contaminated. For example, in 2007, an E. coli outbreak was reported and traced back to spinach. This contamination killed three people and sickened more than 200. Authorities isolated the E. coli strain and found that it originated from cattle feces and wild pig feces in river water used to irrigate the effected spinach farm. Since the outbreak, lawmakers in Congress have pushed for regular inspection of processing plants. Additionally, the FDA has announced voluntary guidelines for preventing food poisoning in fresh produce.
When such an outbreak occurs, produce from the entire farm is recalled, but often, only a portion of the produce is tainted. In the above example, all spinach from that farm and other farms was recalled and destroyed. There are many farms in which some fields are managed differently than other fields. For example, one field is irrigated with river water and another is irrigated with well water or water from a different source. Another example is one field having one set of pickers and another field having a different set of pickers. If one of the pickers contracts a contagious disease, there is no need to destroy crops from the fields that he or she didn't contact.
Similarly, once the produce is picked, it becomes indistinguishable from similar produce picked by other pickers on the same field or different fields. There is no way for the consumer or distributor/store to provide feedback to the growers regarding product quality, etc.
What is needed is a system and method for tracking produce back to a time/date of picking and the individual fields and/or pickers.